


One Too Many

by AstroGirl



Category: Doctor Who, Farscape
Genre: Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-23
Updated: 2010-03-23
Packaged: 2017-10-08 06:34:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/73741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstroGirl/pseuds/AstroGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Crichton's met some strange people in bars, but this guy might just make the top ten list.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Too Many

Crichton was already very slightly tipsy when he walked into the bar. There's nothing like a solo pub crawl when you've been fighting with the missus. Well, all right, technically, they hadn't been _fighting_. You had to be careful of your terminology with Aeryn. "Fighting" generally meant someone was going to end up with a lethal pulse pistol wound, and while they'd had their rough patches, they'd never quite gotten to the point of attempted spouse-icide. Not since they'd been married, at least, and Crichton figured that anything you did while under freaky alien mind control really didn't count. Anyway, she'd made it clear that she wanted some time alone with the baby -- she'd claimed he was more mature company -- and Crichton had obligingly buggered off to--

Wow. This was a seriously happening place. He shouldered his way past a three-armed lizard person, two outrageously drunk Luxans, and a couple of tentacled.... _things_... who were engaged in something he hoped was a fight, and took the only open seat at the bar, next to a bleached-blond Sebacean man.

He nodded amiably to his new seatmate. "Hey."

The man ignored him in favor of yelling at the bartender, although he somehow managed to do it without raising his voice. "I said _food_. Now!"

The bartender, who looked more-or-less human except for the glowing purple eyes, turned towards the man and started to snap out a reply -- probably something to do with the fact that he was currently busy serving drinks to a group of beings who had far too many hands and mouths per person and seemed determined to put all of them to use.

"Food," repeated the man in the kind of calm and reasonable tone that generally indicates the person using it is anything but. "_Now_."

The bartender quaked, nodded, and disappeared through a door into what Crichton presumed was the kitchen.

"Nice trick," Crichton said. "Maybe you could teach it to me sometime. Might come in handy when my kid's older."

The man turned to him as if noticing him for the first time. Which he didn't look too happy about, but Crichton decided to let it pass. "So, they have good food here? I don't guess they serve burgers. Man. I haven't had a decent burger in cycles. This one place on-- Actually, I forget what planet it was on. I think it was the one with the trees? I tried to get them to make me a burger, but they didn't have beef, so they used this processed protein gloop. Tasted like snot. And you don't want to _know_ what was in the quote-unquote 'cheese.'"

"Will you _shut up_," the man hissed.

Crichton was about to respond with some comment to the effect that his wife had said the same thing this morning, which was why he was here in the first place, when something happened that even Crichton, jaded interstellar traveler that he was, had to admit was really freaking strange. One microt the man next to him was an ordinary-looking humanoid with a bad dye job and a bit of an attitude, and the next...

"Whoa!" he cried, scooting backwards on his bar stool. "Skeletor!" He caught himself against the bar to keep from toppling over and watched incredulously as his seatmate's skull faded back into flesh, then flashed into bone again. "You, uh... You got something on your face there, buddy. Under. Uh... _Under_ your face." Crichton waved his hand in front of his own face to illustrate. "_Damn_."

But the skull was already gone. Crichton looked around the bar. Nobody else seemed to have reacted. Maybe they saw stuff this freaky every day. Hell, it was like the Cantina scene from _Star Wars_ in here. Or maybe he was hallucinating. He could never quite rule out that possibility anymore.

"Yes," said the man. "How terribly perceptive of you. Have a gold star. _Where's my food?!_" He looked at Crichton as if contemplating making him the main course if his meal didn't arrive soon.

"I don't care what species you are, that crap can _not_ be normal. You thought about seeing a doctor?"

The man laughed a strange, bitter laugh. "Oh, yes," he said. "That's _exactly_ what I need. A _doctor_." His eyes shone with a kind of insane glint, an expression Crichton had learned to recognize all too well by now. Suspecting that perhaps this might be a good time to change seats, he glanced around the bar, but if anything it was even busier than it had been a moment ago. Oh, well. Raging insanity didn't necessarily make one a bad companion. Hell, he'd ridden the Crazy Train a few too many times himself to pass judgment on anybody else. Right?

While Crichton was pondering exactly how to respond to this comment -- humor? sympathy? asking the guy what the frell he was talking about? -- the bartender reappeared with a giant plate of food, sat it down in front of Skeletor, and rapidly backed away. By the time he was gone, so was the food. Ooh-kay. That was pretty damned impressive, even by the standards of someone who'd spent four cycles living with Rygel.

"When he comes back," Crichton said, "you think you could intimidate him into bringing me a fellip nectar?"

This merely earned him a contemptuous look, although one that only lasted for a microt before the man turned back to his plate again, picked it up, and started licking.

"Nice to see a man with a good appetite," Crichton muttered. He was beginning to think maybe there was a good reason why this seat had been unoccupied. Still, his momma had always taught him that it never hurts to be polite, even if experience had amended that to "until the person you're being polite to threatens to dissect your brain and/or kill you."

"I'm John Crichton," he said as the plate crashed back down to the surface of the bar. As an afterthought, he added a little wave. Half the cultures he'd encountered just looked at you funny if you offered to shake, but he'd never seen a friendly wave put anybody off yet.

"Don't care," said the man, and started looking around for the bartender again. Crichton supposed it was too much to hope that he'd decided to buy him that fellip nectar.

"Yeah, see," he said, "when I tell you my name, you're supposed to tell me _your_ name. And then we're on friendly terms. Hell, we can be drinking buddies! It'll be fun!" Okay, he wasn't entirely sure where that sentiment had come from. How much had he had to drink at that last place, anyway? He hadn't _thought_ it was all that much, but he also wasn't remotely sure what had been in that green drink with the sticks in it. Possibly something that took a while to kick in. Damned alien booze. You just can't trust it.

The man looked at him again. "I," he said, with what Crichton would swear was a bizarre combination of haughty dignity and B-movie-villain cheese, "am the Master."

"I'm sorry... You're _what_?" Crichton started giggling, loud enough that several bar patrons turned to look at him. Somehow, this just made him giggle harder. "I'm sorry... Did you say, 'The Master?' Dude! Your parents must have _hated_ you!"

The Master glared at him with a cold, crazy loathing in his eyes. The look gave Crichton chills, although he still couldn't quite stop laughing. Not an unfamiliar a combination of emotions for him, actually.

A strange, electric glow abruptly crackled across the Master's hands. Crichton felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, and his laughter choked off into something halfway between a splutter and a growl. His fingers inched down in the direction of his pulse pistol without bothering to stop and check in with his brain. But whatever freaky electric eel thing the guy had going on, it stopped as quickly as it had started, leaving Crichton mercifully unzapped.

The Master lowered his head to his hands, scrubbed wearily at his face, and made a strangled "aaargh" sound. "That it's come to this..." he said, clearly talking to himself rather than to Crichton. He ran his hands through his hair, making it stand out in strange, ragged spikes. "I am _the Master_!" He seemed to be shouting at the ceiling of the bar now. "I am a Lord of Time! Entire planets have trembled at my name! I've destroyed galaxies! I took on bloody _Rassilon_! I alone escaped the inescapable closed spacetime of Gallifrey! And where has it got me? Here! Out of all of time and space, the Vortex had to spit me out _here_, at the stinking arse-end of the cosmos, where it has become my undeserved fate to be yammered at incessantly by _the most annoying lifeforms in the universe_!"

He looked at Crichton again, with brightly gleaming eyes and a smile that was not the tiniest bit friendly.

"I, uh... Yeah, I know exactly how you feel," Crichton said. He was already off his barstool and slowly backing away. Funnily enough, there was no one behind him to bump into. In fact, this whole area of the bar seemed to be much emptier than it was a minute ago. "That's a bummer, all right," he added.

Crichton, despite his wife's frequent allegations, was not _entirely_ without common sense. Weirdly enough, he almost found said common sense easier to access when slightly drunk. And right now, Common Sense, in conjunction with its old war buddy Experience, was telling him that when you took a crazy and/or megalomaniac alien with an apparent interest in the topic of spacetime, not to mention potential reasons to appreciate a quick way to get from point A to point B, and put him in the same room with John Crichton, things tended to go very, very badly. "Listen," he said, "I'm gonna go and find the little humans' room, 'kay?"

Half-convinced the guy was about to follow him out of the bar, he was careful to walk backwards down the street, keeping his eyes on the exit and his hand on his pulse pistol. But except for accidentally bumping into some weird blue box in the middle of the sidewalk, nothing interesting happened at all.

Huh. Maybe the universe had finally decided to leave him alone. Cool. Although he sure felt sorry for the next person who might go looking for an empty barstool...


End file.
